how to clean antique singer sewing machine
Cleaning and Operating a 100-Year-Old Sewing Machine
Hello! This is Lindsay's husband Nathaniel guest-blogging a hardly a prefatory remarks more or less my experience cleansing up an old stitchery political machine: specifically, a 1916 Singer model 128 with "Rococo" style decals, hand-crank, and bentwood cover. Lindsay's parents ran across this beauty at an antique put in in shrimpy-town Texas and the deal was just too keen to pass skyward. According to the Singer Serial Number Database, it (F7213523) was born in the Clydebank, Scotland factory sometime in 1916, making it precisely a century old this year! Though the 128 is a 3/4-sizing version of the 127 and technically "portable" (i.e., it has a handle), this machine is made of solid steel and weighs in at 27 pounds, not including the case, cover, or crank! It is among the earliest 127/128s, which were produced from ~1912 ahead until the 1960s.
The thing was in really decent shape to begin with, simply it was rather dusty nonetheless and some parts needed a good First State-gunking. Positive, the wood had gotten rather unhardened with years and had stray scuffs/flecks of rouge hither-and-in that location. To set out, I simply wetted a cotton rag with warm, somewhat soapy water (about a dime's worth of dish soap to a dry pint of hearty water) and went over the whole thing thoroughly. Then I remote all the face-plates, the pick, the latent hostility-disk assembly, and the slippy plates that cover the shuttlecock. I soaked totally of these, in addition to the various other attachments (hemmer, reaper binder, tucker, ruffler, etc) in boiling water with a scare away of OxyClean-like product for active 5 minutes, subsequently which I dried them each thoroughly. Caveat lavaretur: these cleaning procedures worked for me, but your results may vary; please mind!
I wanted to clean completely the wood up nicely, but first I needed a snatch of fine-grained Sand report to gently rub off any marks that the unctuous water supply couldn't tackle. Side by side, it was time to shine, only I was afraid to use a fund-bought furniture finis: instead I successful my own! Easiest thing in the reality: if you can make your own dressing, you john make this DIY-wood fine-tune. In fact, it's really nothing much a sauce vinaigrette: you mixed one portion cheap European olive tree-oil with one part white vinegar (some recipes use more vinegar than this; I also added a couple drops of essential oils to mask the vinegar smell). Put this 1:1 mix in a spray-bottle, spritz whatsoever onto a cotton cloth, and rub off it uniformly into the old wood one area at once. Simply repeat this process until your wood is clean, sulky, and shiny! I did this all over, inside and outside, bentwood cover and every last. Emboldened by my success with the woods, I also secondhand the "house dressing" to review the black Japanned parts of the machine (including the decals, cautious) which resulted in a polished gleam crown-to-tail!
After all of the metal parts had whole dried, I attempted to polish them up using Blue Magic brand "metal polish cream". I chose this over other options at the auto-parts store because it claimed to work every metal types. Piece I was able to get a nice strike happening the expression-plates, I had a tougher time with the Balance wheel and the hardware pieces. Also, I'm not sure what type of metal the contrastive parts are successful of, but I would not commend victimization this stuff on the gold "Singer badge" on the side of the machine higher up the order number: IT ready-made it shinier, but I think IT also made it more silvery (and less aureate-y), which is unfortunate! Before putting all the polished baubles back on, it was advisable to give the machine a advantageous oiling; in fact, the blue-collar (1930 ed; 1951 ed) says "To ensure easy running, the political machine requires oiling and if misused ceaselessly it should embody oiled regular. With moderate consumption an occasional oiling is ample" (pg 16). The manual is in truth clear and easy to read; it also includes detailed, hand-drawn diagrams including one that indicates where to give the oil. WD40 is neat for de-gunking, but ne'er oiling (and don't get any on the surface of the machine, operating theatre it testament eat away the lacquer and dull the decals). Though other lubricants may be serviceable, it's always safest to use sewing-machine oil.
Thanks Nathaniel! He did all this for ME one week when I was really busy at do work – isn't he the best?
I'd never seen one of these vintage machines up close before, so it's been rattling entertaining to learn how it works. It's in reality outstandingly similar to a modern stitching political machine, equally you can see by the plot below. I love that completely the varied parts are exposed so that you actually sympathize how it works and behave repairs along it. I envisage it must be similar to functioning on an experient car ahead everything was computerized and hidden departed.
We took few short videos of the more interesting bits:
Bobbin winder:
Threading the shuttle and needle:
It's kindhearted of hard to figure the stitches in this video, but just for fun I tried stitching through 24 layers of fabric on the three machines I own. First on my real basic start machine, a Blood brother XL2600, then on my Pfaff Ambition 1.0 (which I love), and lastly on the 1916 Singer. The Brother has a walking foot on that, but still patently had some trouble and ready-made a lot of noise doing it. The Pfaff sewed through information technology attractively and the Vocalist didn't have distract either, though I still need to lic along sewing more smoothly and adjusting the sew together length.
Machine demo/comparison: 24-layers
We'atomic number 75 not experts by any means, but hopefully some of you will find this post useful or interesting! Do you own whatsoever vintage sewing machines? And if you do, do you sew with them on a symmetric basis? I'd love to hear any tips!
<3 Lindsay
how to clean antique singer sewing machine
Source: http://www.lindsaywoodward.com/2016/07/cleaning-and-operating-a-100-year-old-sewing-machine.html/
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